So, Chromebooks...

Chrome-based models accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of Acer’s U.S. shipments since being released there in November, President Jim Wong said in an interview at the Taipei-based company’s headquarters. That ratio is expected to be sustainable in the long term and the company is considering offering Chrome models in other developed markets, he said.

Chrome-based models accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of Acer’s U.S. shipments since being released there in November, President Jim Wong said in an interview at the Taipei-based company’s headquarters. That ratio is expected to be sustainable in the long term and the company is considering offering Chrome models in other developed markets, he said.

Chrome-based models accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of Acer’s U.S. shipments since being released there in November, President Jim Wong said in an interview at the Taipei-based company’s headquarters. That ratio is expected to be sustainable in the long term and the company is considering offering Chrome models in other developed markets, he said.

That's what I want to know... Do you think it's because sales are occurring in Asian markets, where Western reporting/surveying isn't as complete? That's my only guess to how no one seems to have noticed this.

Chrome-based models accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of Acer’s U.S. shipments since being released there in November, President Jim Wong said in an interview at the Taipei-based company’s headquarters. That ratio is expected to be sustainable in the long term and the company is considering offering Chrome models in other developed markets, he said.

The same reason that Tim Cook doesn't tell you exactly how many iPhone sold is the iPhone 5.

Exactly. If they're doing well, they don't want every cheap competitor to decide it's a lucrative market they should participate in. If it's doing poorly, they don't their competitors to know that, either.

The same reason that Tim Cook doesn't tell you exactly how many iPhone sold is the iPhone 5.

Exactly. If they're doing well, they don't want every cheap competitor to decide it's a lucrative market they should participate in. If it's doing poorly, they don't their competitors to know that, either.

"Acer President Jim Wong has told Bloomberg in an interview that five to ten percent of the company's US shipments since the Acer C7 was released on November 13th were accounted for by the $199 Chromebook. In the third quarter of 2012, Acer was the fifth largest manufacturer in terms of PC shipments, with 1,006,000 units shipped, according to IDC. Shipment estimates for Acer in Q4 aren't available as IDC only reports on the top five manufacturers, and the company was beat out by Toshiba in the quarter. However, the numbers suggest the company could have shipped close to 50,000 C7 Chromebooks to-date, and Wong said that considering "all the marketing and promotions were not as broad as Windows 8... to reach this success is encouraging."

That's...what "encouraging" means I guess. Would be pretty funny/ironic if Microsoft ships more Surfaces than Acer does Chromebooks

Is there a much larger demand for these things than is widely known? It just seems odd that they are being cranked out and yet they appear to be a bit of a novelty. Maybe Google and the OEMs know something we don't.

The primary thing I can think of is that, from the OEM's point of view, this might conceivably improve their bargaining position with MS when it comes to OEM Windows etc. And presumably Google is providing some level of support to mitigate OEM losses on what are surely low volume, low margin (read: very poor business case) products. I suppose improved relationships with Google might be another potential OEM benefit, for whatever that might be worth.

The Samsung Chromebook is the #1 best selling product on Amazon's "Laptop Computer" category and it has been sold out for quite awhile. It's also sold out at a lot of other places like the Google play store.

It has a 4 star rating although there are some reviewers complaining that they can't install Skype. I remember in the netbook days manufacturers would opt for Linux instead of Windows to save on licensing costs but the backlash from consumers due to not being able to install apps made them cave and bundle Windows with it. It's interesting to see the Chromebook find some success even though it has more limitations (for the regular consumer who may want to run Office and other windows apps) than an Ubuntu running netbook.

I suspect the rise of smartphones and (non-Windows) tablets has made the idea of computing devices that can't run Windows applications more familiar to consumers, eliminating some of the backlash seen with Linux netbooks.

When I predicted that ALL laptops would ship with touch screens soon, people laughed.

You seem to be having trouble understanding either the meaning of the word "ALL" or the meaning of the word "soon", because you're quite wrong, and people are still very much laughing

If you'd said that touchscreen laptops would get more popular in the future, then you'd have a point.

Quote:

And yes, Apple will copy Microsoft by shipping a Macbook with a touch screen as well as touch enabling OSX soon enough. It's inevitable.

You do realize a touch enabled version of OSX has been available since 2007, right? It was originally just called OS X, then iPhone OS, and, since 2010, it's been called iOS. And touch screen computers have been around at least since 1983. This is not some new idea MS invented with Win8 and the Surface.

When I predicted that ALL laptops would ship with touch screens soon, people laughed.

You seem to be having trouble understanding either the meaning of the word "ALL" or the meaning of the word "soon", because you're quite wrong, and people are still very much laughing

If you'd said that touchscreen laptops would get more popular in the future, then you'd have a point.

Quote:

And yes, Apple will copy Microsoft by shipping a Macbook with a touch screen as well as touch enabling OSX soon enough. It's inevitable.

You do realize a touch enabled version of OSX has been available since 2007, right? It was originally just called OS X, then iPhone OS, and, since 2010, it's been called iOS. And touch screen computers have been around at least since 1983. This is not some new idea MS invented with Win8 and the Surface.

Heh, I'm long on this, so I expect most people to see it the way you do.

Laptops without touchscreens will go the way of the floppy disk. My niece and nephew have iPads, whenever they use my PC they always start off by forgetting and touching the screen. Anecdotal yes, but in a world that is increasingly becoming touch centric it just seems a no brainer to me.

PS, I'm saying Apple will ship a Macbook with a touch screen such that you can physically interact with the elements on screen. Currently you cannot use OSX and a Macbook to do this.

Heh, I'm long on this, so I expect most people to see it the way you do.

Laptops without touchscreens will go the way of the floppy disk. My niece and nephew have iPads, whenever they use my PC they always start off by forgetting and touching the screen. Anecdotal yes, but in a world that is increasingly becoming touch centric it just seems a no brainer to me.

PS, I'm saying Apple will ship a Macbook with a touch screen such that you can physically interact with the elements on screen. Currently you cannot use OSX and a Macbook to do this.

Heh, I'm long on this, so I expect most people to see it the way you do.

Laptops without touchscreens will go the way of the floppy disk. My niece and nephew have iPads, whenever they use my PC they always start off by forgetting and touching the screen. Anecdotal yes, but in a world that is increasingly becoming touch centric it just seems a no brainer to me.

PS, I'm saying Apple will ship a Macbook with a touch screen such that you can physically interact with the elements on screen. Currently you cannot use OSX and a Macbook to do this.

Heh, I'm long on this, so I expect most people to see it the way you do.

Laptops without touchscreens will go the way of the floppy disk. My niece and nephew have iPads, whenever they use my PC they always start off by forgetting and touching the screen. Anecdotal yes, but in a world that is increasingly becoming touch centric it just seems a no brainer to me.

PS, I'm saying Apple will ship a Macbook with a touch screen such that you can physically interact with the elements on screen. Currently you cannot use OSX and a Macbook to do this.

When I predicted that ALL laptops would ship with touch screens soon, people laughed.

You seem to be having trouble understanding either the meaning of the word "ALL" or the meaning of the word "soon", because you're quite wrong, and people are still very much laughing

If you'd said that touchscreen laptops would get more popular in the future, then you'd have a point.

Quote:

And yes, Apple will copy Microsoft by shipping a Macbook with a touch screen as well as touch enabling OSX soon enough. It's inevitable.

You do realize a touch enabled version of OSX has been available since 2007, right? It was originally just called OS X, then iPhone OS, and, since 2010, it's been called iOS. And touch screen computers have been around at least since 1983. This is not some new idea MS invented with Win8 and the Surface.

Heh, I'm long on this, so I expect most people to see it the way you do.

Laptops without touchscreens will go the way of the floppy disk. My niece and nephew have iPads, whenever they use my PC they always start off by forgetting and touching the screen. Anecdotal yes, but in a world that is increasingly becoming touch centric it just seems a no brainer to me.

PS, I'm saying Apple will ship a Macbook with a touch screen such that you can physically interact with the elements on screen. Currently you cannot use OSX and a Macbook to do this.

Again, I agree with the general sentiment that touchscreen laptops/combos will get more popular, and Apple will probably at some point release something of a combo device (arguably they already have with iPads+bluetooth keyboards). But again, in the bit I quoted above, you need to remove the word 'ALL' and/or the word 'soon' or you're just plain wrong.

Youu must have missed the BF arguments we've had where people dismissed touch screen laptops. Use the search function. There are plenty of posts.

Secondly, I said Apple.

No, haven't missed them. You have Windows 8 with touch support (much more so than they have in the past) and not just relying on Elo to make them work. And with Intel integrating it into the Ultrabook standard, this is meant to push the transition.

Beyond that, if you've been proselytizing for maybe eight or so years (before the iPhone), that would be more interesting. Convertible laptops, UMPCs, multitouch in cellular devices, and the idea of convergence has been talked about for years. The idea of touch screens for computing is nowhere near new, it's just more visible to the average person now.

As for Apple, I was just pointing out what you said was incorrect. OS X can support it, and it's been demonstrated for years.

Over on Google+ one of the comments to the story about the Chromebook Pixel reported that the domain chromebookpixel.com was registered in October 2012 by MarkMonitor.

MarkMonitor is a company that specialises in brand protection (such as fighting domain squatting), so they would be very unlikely to register a domain that uses the Chromebook trademark unless Google was the company behind the registration. Of course that doesn't mean that the device is real, Google might have registered many different Chromebook related domains for future use.

FWIW François Beaufort* has reported many codenames for Chrome OS devices in the past that turned out to be real, so if he says there is a device codenamed Link he is probably correct. He has also previously mentioned HiDPI devices being tested, and shown evidence of work on Chrome to support touchscreens, and that a lot of assets are being updated with higher resolution versions. Again none of this means it is real, but the pieces are in place to support such a device.

* If you are at all interested in Chrome OS you should follow this guy, he finds all sorts of interesting things about it.

François Beaufort has done some more detective work. There's a commit to the git repository that describes a light bar that matches what was shown in the video, and the keyboard backlight. Not proof, but certainly a step towards it being real.

Don't ask me. I've played around with Chromium OS but I need to run crap like Eclipse so it's not much use to me. That said there does seem to be a niche of Chrome OS and web hackers who are very into it, and I've already seen multiple people say they've placed orders.

Now in a year or two's time, when Haswell or better still Broadwell is available (or maybe even some nice 64 bit ARMs), and hopefully when there's a suitable IDE and some Android/Chrome OS merger (assuming that's not just talk) I would be awfully tempted to switch from the Mac to Chrome OS. I like the idea behind Chrome OS a LOT, it's not quite ready for me, but I do hope that eventually I can move to a more appliance like device.

Now if I had some money to burn I would be very tempted to get one just for the screen. If nothing else it's nice to see another company making premium laptops.

But I would still ask why would you want this? The market for this can't be large, so perhaps they had specific people in mind. Like Google employees.

The Google employees point is a good one, Google may well want secure hot-deskable always up-to-date high quality hardware for its own employees. I don't imagine there's a huge market for this laptop, but when you have Google's resources you an afford to do cool things and see what happens.

But I would still ask why would you want this? The market for this can't be large, so perhaps they had specific people in mind. Like Google employees.

The Google employees point is a good one, Google may well want secure hot-deskable always up-to-date high quality hardware for its own employees. I don't imagine there's a huge market for this laptop, but when you have Google's resources you an afford to do cool things and see what happens.

Google employees that aren't:

- developers or admins, since they need IDEs, compilers, terminals, etc. (and probably want more RAM than this)- designers, who want to run Illustrator, Photoshop, etc (and probably want more RAM than this)

Unfortunately, those are the classes of people I can think of who would benefit most from this (high-res text/code and graphics, respectively). If Google wants their employees using ChromeOS, wouldn't the rest of them be better served by saving $1000 per employee?

But I would still ask why would you want this? The market for this can't be large, so perhaps they had specific people in mind. Like Google employees.

The Google employees point is a good one, Google may well want secure hot-deskable always up-to-date high quality hardware for its own employees. I don't imagine there's a huge market for this laptop, but when you have Google's resources you an afford to do cool things and see what happens.

Google employees that aren't:

- developers or admins, since they need IDEs, compilers, terminals, etc. (and probably want more RAM than this)- designers, who want to run Illustrator, Photoshop, etc (and probably want more RAM than this)

If they built the OS they can port whatever they want to it. ChromeOS is basically just linux, not exactly hard to port gcc and an IDE to that...

Terminals and remote desktops Chrome OS can do, and Google employees may not want or need local compilers as well there's a bunch of servers at Google. IDEs is an interesting one, I wouldn't be surprised if Google has some nice web-based IDEs internally. There are some interesting cloud IDEs from companies with a fraction of Google's resources and brain-power.

You make a good point, but I wouldn't assume that the way Google developers work is the same as the rest of the computer industry.

Terminals and remote desktops Chrome OS can do, and Google employees may not want or need local compilers as well there's a bunch of servers at Google. IDEs is an interesting one, I wouldn't be surprised if Google has some nice web-based IDEs internally. There are some interesting cloud IDEs from companies with a fraction of Google's resources and brain-power.

You make a good point, but I wouldn't assume that the way Google developers work is the same as the rest of the computer industry.

That's fair, and I didn't realize that ChromeOS had the terminal/remote capabilities you mention. Maybe this really was just designed to be a really nice internal thin client then? That makes a little more sense, although it still seems like either a) an rMBP, or b) a cheap Chromebook + 27" monitor are potentially better solutions for the same price.

That said, I don't know why I'm complaining about another company pushing high-res displays in the laptop space! :-)